Rodney was working from home, so to speak, which certainly happened more often than it used to. But with Jennifer off world on one of her medical outreach program visits, he had the honor of spending a lot of quality time with his little girl.

He looked up from the tablet he'd been hunched over for a while and took a peek at Teylanna as she peered intently at the homework displayed upon her own tablet. After a moment he frowned and straightened up- his daughter looked mad.

"What's wrong, Tey?"

"Nothing," the four year old replied without looking up.

Rodney's frown deepened but he didn't say anything. He and Jennifer had found that the little genius would respond better and talk to them more often if they let her find her own time to do so. Pushing never ever helped with Teylanna, a trait that Jennifer had declared had come from him.

He couldn't argue.

He looked back down to his tablet in an effort to finish his current project, stealing brief glances at his daughter every few minutes. Each and every time he looked at her he saw the same anger upon her little features. He focused on his own work for a minute and when he looked up again he nearly jumped out of his clothes when he found his stealthy daughter standing right next to him.

Stealth was a trait she'd inherited from Jennifer.

"Holy cra….ckers," said Rodney, barely keeping his language in check. He smiled to let Teylanna know he was okay and not upset at all. "You startled me."

"Daddy?" said Teylanna, her voice and face serious, "I have a question."

Rodney raised an eyebrow in surprise and anticipation- her questions were usually good ones.

Her head tilted a millimeter to the right, just like Jennifer's did when she wanted to ask him something monumental. "I'm Canadian, right?"

"Well," replied Rodney, hiding his surprise well, "yes, and you're American."

"Because you're from the Dominion of Canada and Mommy is from the United States of America," she stated.

"That's right," replied an amused Rodney with a nod. "Yes." She hadn't even been three years old when she'd demanded to know why the flag patches on his and her mother's arms were different.

"Are you proud to be Canadian, Daddy?"

This time Rodney could do nothing to mask the surprise he was feeling. "I guess so," he said, then blanched as he heard the absurdity in his voice. "Yes," he clarified resolutely. "I'm proud to be Canadian. Why…?"

"And Mommy is proud to be American?"

Rodney nodded and then asked, "What's bringing this on, Teylanna?"

In response Teylanna placed the mini tablet she had in her hands on the table. "What's this, Daddy?"

Rodney looked at the screen and then looked at his daughter. "I thought you were supposed to be doing homework."

"I didn't have any, Daddy," she replied, and before he could ask she said, "I did it all in school."

Rodney nodded and looked at her tablet again. Taking up nearly the whole screen was a picture of a…. "It's a Zero Point Module," replied Rodney, only a little surprised to see that she'd been studying that device.

Teylanna let out a small puff of breath that was as much frustration as it was impatience. "Yes, Daddy, I know what it is. But what do you call it?"

Rodney was lost for a second, and then it dawned on him. "Oh. It's a ZedPM.

Teylanna nodded somewhat absently. "Thank you, Daddy," she replied before turning around and trotting back to the couch.

Rodney watched his little girl settle down on the couch and focus intently on her tablet. She remained still for some time, absorbed in her work.

Rodney slowly turned his attention back to his own work, though he kept checking on Teylanna from time to time, and each time she had been engrossed with her work. After half an hour Rodney softly sighed and thought, What was that about?


"And you have no idea why Dr. Allen would want to see us?"

Rodney rolled his eyes at his wife and managed, somehow, to keep what he said next from coming out as a whine or growl. "No idea at all." At Jennifer's dubious look Rodney shook his head. "Tey was perfectly fine the whole time you were gone, Jennifer." Rodney took a second to think back over the last two days to verify what he'd said. "Nothing happened. She went to school. She came home from school, did her homework if she didn't already have it done and so on."

Jennifer could tell that Rodney really had no idea why Dr. Alana Allen, one of the anthropologists who doubled as one of the volunteer teachers to school aged children, wanted to see them. She tried to get more comfortable on the couch and only partially succeeded before the door opened to admit Dr. Allen.

"Hey guys," she said with a smile as she went to her desk. As she sat down she said, "Just give me one minute to update this file and I'll be right with you."

As Allen started typing furiously on her computer, Jennifer took a moment to think about the teacher. Alana Allen was a petite young woman, 'young' being a relative term as she was only a few years younger than her, with attractive green eyes and brown hair that flowed down to the middle of her back. Jennifer had instantly befriended the likable anthropologist, and she could tell from the get go that the other woman was as intelligent as she was beautiful.

She was jolted out of her thoughts by Rodney poking her in the thigh with his hand. When she looked at him he motioned forward with his head, and when she turned in that direction she found that Allen had moved to sit on a chair across from them and was looking at her with a slight grin on her lips. "I'm sorry?"

Allen laughed and gave Jennifer an understanding smile. "I asked how your trip was," she said before looking down to the tablet she had resting on her lap.

"Fine, thanks," replied Jennifer more edgily than she'd liked. She cleared her throat after catching a glimpse of Rodney's smug grin out of the corner of her eye and said in a more comfortable voice, "It went very well actually. We managed to help a lot of people and teach them how to look after themselves better."

She shot Rodney a 'Take that!' look and then waited for Alana to speak.

"Excellent." Allen looked to Rodney first and then to Jennifer. "The reason I called you here is there was an incident with Teylanna yesterday."

Jennifer instantly leaned forward to press the matter but stopped when Allen held her hand up to forestall any comment from her or Rodney.

"It's nothing serious," she anxiously clarified. "In fact it's actually minor but something that needs to be addressed. She refuses to call the letter zee by its correct name."

Jennifer sensed Rodney stiffen next to her and genuinely felt sorry for what Alana was about to hear.

"And what does she call it?" asked Rodney, his voice as stiff as his posture had become.

If Alana noticed Rodney's sudden frostiness she didn't let on as she replied, "She constantly says 'zed' instead of 'zee', and in the approved curriculum…"

"Approved curriculum?" repeated Rodney as though the phrase left a sour taste in his mouth. Jennifer reached over to cover his hand with hers, but he merely shrugged it off and stood up to glare down at the seated Allen.

"Our daughter is smarter than any of us were at her age," he said with more than a little pride. "She's part Canadian and as a Canadian she's well within her right to call that letter zed. It's grammatically correct and used in a number of countries, not just Canada. It's a perfectly acceptable use of the phrase that goes back…"

Forty-two minutes later Jennifer and Rodney strolled arm in arm through the corridors of Atlantis. Jennifer could tell by his shallow breaths, red face and set jaw that he was still pissed off by what he'd called Alana's 'unsuccessful attempt to get Teylanna to conform to her American imperialistic grammatical rules'. Allen, to her credit, took all of Rodney's forty minute rant without so much as a whimper which was truly impressive. After all, Jennifer had seen battle hardened Marines shed a tear after receiving one of Rodney's dress downs.

"The nerve," seethed Rodney through clenched teeth. "Saying our daughter was wrong! Wrong! When she clearly wasn't. What kind of message does that sort of erroneous attitude send to an impressionable and very intelligent four year old?"

"Easy, Rodney," replied Jennifer. "Your blood pressure must be up around your ears."

"Oh is that a professional diagnosis?" he snapped. He immediately winced and looked over to her and said with an appropriate amount of regret in his voice, "I'm sorry. Really. It's just she…argh!"

Jennifer nodded to let him off the hook even if she internally reserved the right to revisit the comment later, and then smiled as he released her arm and drew her into his side by putting his arm around her shoulders.

"Do you know what I really take from this?" asked Jennifer as she cuddled against Rodney's shoulder.

"What?"

She smiled proudly as she said, "She took a position and stuck with it. That's phenomenal for a child her age."

Jennifer looked up to see a slow, broad smile form on Rodney's face. He clearly hadn't looked at it that way.

"Well she's our kid," he replied a moment later. He leaned over and kissed the top of her head and then said, "What else would we expect?"